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“Miserable” Turkmenistan to Honor Large Families

Turkmenistan has again found itself scraping the bottom of an international index.

Last week, the Business Insider website released its 2013 Misery Index, ranking 197 countries based on unemployment and inflation rates. Turkmenistan, with its 10 percent inflation and 60 percent unemployment, came fifth from last.

"Agriculture employs half the country's workforce but accounts for only eight percent of Turkmenistan's revenue. The country suffers from rampant corruption and mismanagement by its authoritarian government," Business Insider said. "And it isn't going to get any better."

But not everyone is feeling miserable. President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov – who calls his current term the “Era of Supreme Happiness of the Stable State” – has ordered one of his palaces converted into apartments to be awarded to families who bear an eighth child by March 8, International Women’s Day, reports Russia's vesti.ru website.

International Women’s Day is a big deal across the former Soviet Union, though it’s not regularly linked to fertility. Berdymukhamedov’s predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, treated population growth in Turkmenistan as a priority, eyeing the country’s sparsely populated deserts as a lush breeding ground.

But a growing population is unlikely to do much for the country’s atrocious human rights record, which regularly lands it at the bottom of other indices, on topics like press freedom (third from last, says Reporters Without Borders). Transparency International ranks Turkmenistan 170th out of 174 in its most recent Corruption Perceptions Index.

With all that unemployment, a growing population is unlikely to combat misery.